Dead I Well May Be Read Online Free PDF

how long he’s been here. Ten years, fifteen? He still has a Mick accent (funny one too, touch of the jassboys Crasssmaglayn) but he has Yank clothes and Yank sensibility to money and girls. He doesn’t whine on about the Old Country like some wanks ya run into, which I suppose at least singles him out from your average Paddy bastard. That’s not to say that he’s likable. Not at all. Sleekiter wee shite you’d be hard pressed to meet, but he’s ok if you don’t mind that kind of thing, which personally I sort of do. He’s a bloody thief, too, and he robs me blind behind my back, and if I wasn’t the new boy on the block I’d say something but I am and I’m not going to.
    Our man, our fearless leader for one night only, thank God. Typical that it would be this night Scotchy was running the show. For, of course, I wasn’t to know, but tonight was going to be a night that helped set off a whole wonderful series of violent and unpleasant events. Indeed, the only caveat you’ll get is right now when I say that if someone grows up in the civil war of Belfast in the seventies and eighties, perhaps violence is his only form of meaningful expression. Perhaps.
    The train ride was uneventful. I brought a book with me about a Russian who never gets out of bed. Everyone was upset with him, but you could see his point of view. I got off at the end of the line and walked up the steps. It was this walk every day that was the only thing at all keeping me in shape. These steps that separated Riverdale fromthe rest of the Bronx. Hundreds of the buggers. When the Bronx rises up to kill us, at least we’ll have the high ground, Darkey says.
    I was nearly up, hyperventilating, almost at the Four P., when one of the old stagers grabbed me. It was dark and he scared the shite out of me. Mr. Berenson was in his seventies, very frail, and was hard pressed to frighten anyone, but I suppose I was feeling jumpy. I didn’t really know Mr. Berenson and only found out his name later. Much later, when it had all started to go pear-shaped and I felt bad and he was topped and I did some research and discovered he wasn’t really called Berenson at all, but was actually some East German geezer who’d changed his name because probably he worked for Himmler in Poland or something. Anyway, he’s not at all important in the big picture, so I’ll just say that he was stooped, with one of those vague East European accents that you think only exist in the movies. His fingers were stained with nicotine; he was waving them in my face and he was in a mood.
    You wor for Scoshy? he said.
    No, I work with him. I work for Mr. White, I said.
    I tell him, mons ago someone bray in house, prow around.
    Someone broke in your house? I said.
    Yes, I’m telling you, I get up, I frighten him, he go.
    When was this?
    December.
    Maybe it was Santa Claus.
    He was a bit pissed off at that.
    Now you lissen to me, young man. Some nigger bray in house, steal nothing, no come back. I thin to myself, why? Why do this? Time passes, I forget. Two neiss ago, he comes back. I am out. But I know he has been.
    He take anything?
    No.
    What’s your problem?
    He bray in.
    Go to the peelers.
    What?
    Cops, go to the cops. Or get a locksmith. Aye, a locksmith.
    He wasn’t too happy at what I considered to be a sensible solution.But I wasn’t too happy either. You’re a sort of social worker when you come up here, especially with the old timers. There’s never really anything wrong or anything they want. They just want to peg you down and chat away their loneliness for a while. Scotchy’s better at deflecting them than me. I’m too new, look too understanding.
    I was going to say something comforting and bland but just then Fergal saw me at the top of the steps and shouted down:
    Hey, Michael, get your arse up here pronto.
    I excused myself and went up the stairs. It’s diverting to think that if Fergal hadn’t picked that particular moment to see if I was off the train yet I